


Touch

by teenage_hustler



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 23:45:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1488616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenage_hustler/pseuds/teenage_hustler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, everything is about touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strawberrykait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrykait/gifts).



> I really hope you enjoy this, strawberrykait! Thank you C for the beta, as always!
> 
> 9/1/2018: When this fic was originally posted, there was some sort of formatting issue that made some of the text disappear. I've now added the missing text, so the fic should now read as complete.

In the end, everything is about touch.

Touch is how living beings, magical or non, explore the world. It is how basic principles are understood, such as hot and cold, sharp and blunt, pain and pleasure. It is how one connects with things, hence why museums so often have signs telling people not to touch – it is human instinct to connect with things by feeling them under one’s fingers.

While connections can be made using other senses – looking at a beautiful view, hearing an energetic song, tasting an apple pie – the connection is not complete without warm crispiness of the apple pie on the tongue, or the pulsing of the bass as the music courses through the body, or the soft waxiness or fuzziness of the leaves and flowers that make up beautiful views.

Most importantly, touch is for connecting with other people. A cordial handshake, a comforting hug, a fiery kiss, a slap on the face. To forego touch is to forego connecting with others.

Such was Draco’s life, since the curse.

It was a gift, the Dark Lord had said, as he waved his wand above Draco’s head on the morning of his seventeenth birthday, his parents watching helplessly. Anybody Draco touched would, the Dark Lord said, be drained of their life until Draco saw fit to let go.

The Dark Lord, of course, wanted Draco to always hold on until there was no life left. But Draco could never bring himself to do it. He would always let go before it was too late. The scars of punishment the Dark Lord had inflicted on him for this still smarted whenever it was about to rain.

During the war, Draco had held on to the unlikely but never-the-less potent hope that when the Dark Lord died, his magic would die with him, and Draco would be able to touch without killing again. But it was not to be. Voldemort died, but the damage he had inflicted remained for Draco to have to bear for the rest of his life.

He kept the curse as hidden as he could, wearing gloves and long sleeves every day, keeping the hugs and handshakes to a fully-clothed minimum, and maintaining a cool distance from everybody who was not friend or family.

But the desire to touch always remained. Occasionally Pansy, now a Junior Healer at St Mungo’s, or his mother, would let him touch them for ten seconds at a time; long enough for him to feel warm skin and a beating pulse under his fingers, but short enough that they could recover with a long nap and a cup of Earl Grey. But it was hardly enough. Draco longed to touch for as long as he wished, without barriers, again.

Draco had long ago accepted, however, that there are some things one cannot have, no matter how much one might want them.

~*~

When she first approached him one spring morning, he was sitting under an oak tree in Hyde Park, running his fingers along the grass. The tiny blades wilted under his touch.

He supposed he should have been discreet. However, he found, in his experience, that most people were not so observant as to notice the curse at work.

Hermione, however, was not most people.

“Malfoy?” she asked, watching his hands. “What are you doing?”

“I _was_ sitting here, minding my own business, unlike _some_ bushy-haired twats I would care to mention—“

“No. I mean the grass. You’re killing it.”

Draco turned toward the hand she was pointing it. His fingers had lingered for too long on a particular patch. He looked at the dry, crumpled patch of straw and sighed. There was no saving it now.

“I was practising silent magic.”

“Where’s your wand?”

“In my pocket.”

“Show me.”

_Bollocks_. Draco knew he had forgotten something important when he left the office.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Malfoy. That magic came from your hands. What was it?”

“I’m thinking of calling it ‘keep your nose out of other people’s business, Granger, or so help me’.”

Eventually he did tell her. Mainly because it seemed like the only way to get her to leave him alone. He also said that if he told anyone he’d kill her; a far more realistic threat than it had been when he was younger.

Hermione, however, took it in her stride. She nodded, stood up, and asked him if he fancied a walk.

“A walk?” he repeated, stupidly.

“Yes. A walk. It’s a beautiful day and I could use the exercise.”

“So walk by yourself.”

“I would, but I think you’re enjoying my company.”

She extended her hand to him. He frowned at it, all pale and soft and warm. He sighed, pulled on his glove, and allowed her to pull him up.

And so they walked. Around the park, then around it again, then to Hermione’s flat in Diagon Alley.

It was oddly refreshing, chatting to someone who knew about the curse, but not a whole lot else. It helped that she did not seem to care or be intimidated by it. As they walked, they talked about their respective jobs, the Ministry, Muggle politics, the best pumpkin pasty either of them had ever eaten, and whether Opera was better than Jazz (he was gunning for Opera, she for Jazz, and he had an unsettling inkling that she had won that debate), and about how much they loved, and were, to this day, fascinated by, magic.

When they arrived at her house, and she suggested they meet up again sometime, he found himself saying “all right then,” without really thinking about it.

So they met at the park and walked again, this time managing four rotations before heading back to Hermione’s, where she invited him in for coffee. The next time it turned into dinner. Then movies came into the picture, and so on until they were spending every Sunday together.

“Shall we do something a bit different today?” she greeted him one summer morning.

“Like what?” he asked, pressing a handkerchief against his sweaty brow. He hated summer and he always had done. But now that he always had to wear long sleeves and gloves, it was even more unbearable. Whatever Hermione was about to suggest, if it was anything that involved warmer temperatures than those of dungeons with additional Cooling Charms, he probably was not going to be keen.

“I was thinking we could go swimming.”

Draco let out a shout of laughter before realising she was being serious.

“Granger, for an intelligent person, you can be so thick sometimes. I can’t just jump into a public pool and play splashies. What if someone bumped into me and we’re only in our trunks? They’d drown unless I tried to save them, and if I did try they’d probably die anyway.”

“So transfigure your trunks into a full-length suit of Lycra?” she suggested.

“What’s Lycra?”

She rolled her eyes.

“I wasn’t proposing we’d swim with anybody else.”

She took his gloved hand in hers, and the next thing he felt was the uncomfortable pull of Apparition. When he materialised, the sight of Hermione’s back garden greeted him. Except she had turned the centre of it into a small, though reasonably deep-looking, swimming pool. One look at the elegant brickwork along the edges confirmed that this little escape from reality would have taken some pretty hardcore magic.

“Come on then!” He shook the thoughts out of his head and turned to see Hermione waving her wand over her body. He watched her flowery sundress transform into a sensible one piece swimming costume. He could not resist a smile. He should have known that she would be too modest for a bikini. She then pointed her wand at him, and before he could make any noise of protest he found himself in an exact replica of her costume.

“Hey!”

Her laughter, uncompromised in its joyful playfulness, echoed in his ears as he turned the costume into a long-sleeve T-shirt and shorts. As they spent the day in and around the cool water, and he got more opportunities to listen to her laughter, he decided he definitely wanted to hear that sound more often.

He should have known that it couldn’t be like that forever. That eventually what they had would grow, and change, and then end, as all good things must.

“Feel like watching a movie?” Hermione asked him one evening, about a month after they had gone swimming.

“As long as it isn’t that Merlin-awful shaky movie with the huge monster in it, why not?”

“Cloverfield has often been called a masterpiece,” she said snottily. But then she smiled and held up a DVD case. “This is another so-called masterpiece.”

“Really? Ghosts are so classic in the Muggle world that they made a movie about them? And to make it as unambiguous as possible, they called it ‘Ghost’?”

“This is a different sort of ghost.” She slipped the DVD into the player and poured them each a generous glass of wine.

It was definitely preferable as a movie to that Cloverfield nonsense. He would have preferred the three large glasses of wine during that awful movie as well. But this movie was good. It had a great story, it was shot well (in his considered, if not very expert opinion), and of course, that pottery wheel scene. Sweet Merlin, that pottery wheel scene. He could see why Muggles seemed to be so keen on these movies, if many of them had scenes like that. His groin stirred uncomfortably as he watched, and he was in no doubt that the alcohol probably helped speed that process along.

As the movie ended and Hermione pressed the Stop button, she turned towards him. Her cheeks were red from the wine, and her hair was more messed up than usual from her constantly scraping it away from her face. Her eyes were bright and happy, and her mouth was turned upwards as she chuckled at some silent and probably drunken joke.

She was a vision.

“I know it’s not the happiest story ever, but I think it’s quite hopeful, you know? And it’s such an interesting plot, and that pottery wheel scene is really well known; there are so many parodies and the like of it…”

She kept talking, her arms gesturing enthusiastically as she seemed apparently hell-bent on defending her choice of movie despite his never indicating dislike or scepticism towards it. Her passion was as intoxicating to him as her magic; that raw power she constantly radiated. Before he realised what he was doing, he had leaned forward, taken hold of her flailing hands, and kissed her.

The kiss lasted half a second at most before his brain caught up with him and he pulled away. But even that short space of time was enough to feel her magical energy inside. It lingered on his lips, fiery and vibrant and alive, and he screwed his eyes shut as he gathered all of the willpower he possessed to refrain from kissing her again.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually said, opening his eyes again. “That was stupid, and dangerous. I won’t do it again—“

The rest of his sentence was lost by her crushing her mouth against his.

The only sound he could make was a loud “Mmm!”, but it at least portrayed the appropriate level of panic. He wrenched his mouth away, prying her hands from his bare face. The urge to continue to touch her was stronger than the urge to drink another sleepless dream potion had always been during his sixth year. But he resisted.

“No,” he gasped out. “You … we … can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered, pulling her hands out of his grasp. “I can handle danger. I will pull away when I need to. But I can’t…” she brushed his cheek with one finger, and he shuddered as a small sliver of her power absorbed itself into his skin.

“I can’t keep being near you without touching you.”

She planted her lips on his again, and as her power flowed more freely into him, his ability to resist left him entirely. He kissed her back, his tongue prodding against her lips until she granted him access.

It was like every nerve inside him was on fire. The best kind of fire. He backed her against the back of the couch and she wrenched off his stupid gloves. She entwined her naked fingers with his and the feeling of her warm skin, her hot mouth, her _touch_ , was everything he craved. It was everything the curse attracted him to – power, passion, magic. Her moving of his hand to the skin underneath her shirt was to delicious to him that he did not notice her grip on his hand weakening.

Her fingers fluttered through his hair, grazing at his scalp, like his mother did when he was a child and sick in bed. Except, actually, not like his mother did at all. Her magic entered his brain, jumbled his mind, and for a few fleeting moments he was not cursed. He was the Draco he had once been and wanted to be in the future. Present. Breathing. Alive. Touched.

But it could not be. He did not notice when her hand fell from his hair, or when her mouth and tongue slackened. It was only when her life force faded to almost nothing that Draco realised something was wrong.

He pulled away from her, severing all points of contact. The sight that greeted him would haunt him forever. Hermione, splayed on the couch, skin deathly pale and eyes closed. Her normally frizzy hair hung limply over her shoulders like a wet mop. Her body was thin, weak. Lifeless.

And Draco, meanwhile, felt more powerful than he ever had before.

The panic came, burning white-hot through his chest and lungs. He scrambled for his gloves, wrenching them on and then wheeling around and throwing Floo powder into the fireplace. He picked Hermione up and ducked as they stepped into the warm green flames.

“St Mungo’s!”

~*~

Pansy brushed a stray clump of hair off Hermione’s cold forehead as she left the room. Upon seeing his oldest friend exiting, Draco leapt up.

“Pansy, I didn’t—“

Pansy held up her left hand, currently encased in a white surgical glove. Draco briefly wondered if she was wearing the glove so he could not see her useless third and fourth fingers. Another mark of the curse.

“I know you didn’t mean it, Draco,” she said, patiently and not unkindly, but dangerously. “You never mean for these things to happen. But, the cold hard fact of the matter is that she is lucky to be alive.”

“She will … she will recover, though, won’t she?”

Pansy glanced back at the room that housed her newest patient. “She will be perfectly healthy again.”

Draco frowned. Uselessly, since Pansy was not looking at him. “Pansy, what is it? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Pansy sighed, looking ten years older in that single moment. “Her treatments… they worked. But not how they normally should.”

“Okay… but if they worked anyway, why does it matter?”

“Because they worked as though they were being performed … on a Muggle.”

Pansy looked back at Draco then, and she hardly had to say anything more to ensure that Draco’s blood ran cold, but her following confirmation definitely sped the process along.

“Draco, I think her magic is gone.”

~*~

Draco stayed with her as she slept. He would have slept next to her if Pansy did not make a point of kicking him out every night and demanding that he have a shower and run a comb through his hair. He would sit next to Hermione all day, check the charms around her, and play her favourite music to her.

He did not touch her. Even with his gloves on. He did not dare.

When she finally awoke, three and a half weeks had passed. Draco had been sitting there as usual, watching her, when he saw her hand stir. Her eyes fluttered open and Draco was by er side in half a second.

She blinked at him until her eyes focused, and then her face broke into a grin that tugged painfully at his heart.

“Draco,” she whispered, reaching up to him.

He leapt away as if he had been shocked. She pulled her hand back, startled, and he approached her again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I … I’m so sorry, Hermione.”

She shook her head, her smile tired but cheerful. “Oh Draco, it wasn’t your fault. I pushed you, remember?”

“Well … yes, I suppose you did.” Draco tried for a smile, but he could not quite manage it.

“And hey, look on the bright side,” she continued. “I’m fine, aren’t I? No harm done, really.”

It was then that Draco realised that she did not know. Sometimes he forgot that he was so much more in tune to the presence of magic than others, thanks to the curse. Hermione must have thought herself fine before she could not feel what he felt from her. Or rather, what he no longer felt.

“Hermione,” he said nervously. “You’re not fine.”

“What are you talking about?” She continued to smile warmly, which only served to make what he was doing more painful.

But in the end, he knew he just had to say it.

“It’s your magic.”

Her smile faltered, and her eyes lost their warmth. Draco knew he did not have to say anything more.

“I … I really, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry—“ he started, but Hermione held up a pale hand.

“No, Draco. Don’t blame yourself for this. Please. The fault is mine.”

“How can you possibly think that? I’m the one who—“

“I had all the control,” she clarified. “I could feel your power—“

“Curse.”

“Power,” she repeated, sternly. “I could feel it when you touched me, and I could feel it taking you over. And I could feel myself weakening. Don’t you remember me promising you I would pull away?”

“Yes,” Draco replied slowly. “Yes, I do remember that.”

“And I could have pulled away. But I didn’t. Not until…”

She trailed off, but Draco hardly needed her to continue to get her meaning. _Until it was too late. Until my magic went to you._

__

“Hermione,” he whispered, leaning as close to her as he dared. “Why didn’t you pull away? Why didn’t you save yourself?”

She closed her eyes, shaking her head and placing a trembling hand over her mouth. When she opened her eyes again, they were brimming with tears.

“Because,” she near-whispered, in a watery voice that did not suit her. “Because I didn’t want to let you go. I love you, Draco.”

Draco had not thought it possible to feel both overjoyed with happiness and paralysed with unbridled sadness at the same time. But somehow he managed it.

~*~

Hermione was released a few weeks later with a clean bill of health. But, as Pansy had predicted, her magic did not come back. How could it, after all? It was now inside Draco, and he could not return it to her.

As she recovered, he asked her several times if she wanted him to stop visiting her. After all, he could hardly blame her if the very sight of him and all that he had cost her to lose would depress her to the point of being unable to function, let alone continue recovering. But she would always say no, absolutely not, and that she wanted him there. So he would stay.

But sometimes he would leave to get them a cup of tea, or nip to the loo, and see her through her room window twirling her wand, now a useless stick to her, between her fingers. Or he would see her watching when the mediwitches cast Healing Charms on her, and the look in her eyes – the pain, despair, loss, whatever it was – it hurt to see.

He was at the park again when she approached the following Sunday, killing time by killing grass. Now he barely had to touch the thin blades before they turned to straw. The curse was more powerful now than it had ever been. So was he.

“Hi,” she said. Her mouth was turned up in a smile, but it did not quite reach her eyes.

“Hey,” he replied, thrusting on his glove.

“So…” She jabbed nervously at the ground with her toe. “I thought we could go to a Muggle cinema today, maybe? You can try popcorn and those milkshakes I told you about? And there’s a nice pizza place where we could have dinner afterwards—“

“Hermione.” He stood up, and when she tried to take his gloved hand, he pulled away. “I think we need to stop this.”

Her sad eyes widened. “What? But … but why?”

“Because this isn’t fair.”

“What do you mean?”

Draco sighed, rubbing his eyes. She was so head-strong, he should have known he would need to explain this to the most minute detail. “It isn’t fair for me to ask you to be with me.”

“What? But I want to be with you.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You may think you want me now, but eventually you are going to want more than I can give. And, Hermione, you _deserve_ everything that you will want.”

“You’re being cryptic. This is about your power, right?”

“Hermione, please, call it what it is. It is a curse. A dangerous, debilitating curse. Two minutes of kissing you and I took your magic away forever. If that happens again I would kill you, because your magic is inside me now, and it has made the curse stronger.”

“So we won’t touch then! I can live with that! Draco, please—“

“You need to touch, Hermione. You need to be able to hug someone. Kiss someone. Make love to someone. You deserve to feel the warmth of someone’s skin. You deserve that, and more.”

“But I don’t want any of that!” She grabbed at him desperately, and he had no time to pull away from her. She caught his arms and pulled him to her. “All I want is you. If I can’t have magic any more, at least I’ll have you.”

He almost caved. He almost let himself be selfish. His heart was aching for him to be.

But no. He had a plan and he had to follow through with it. It was her only chance to be happy again.

He pulled her hands off him. Looking into her eyes, he whispered “Goodbye, Hermione.” Then he turned and walked, leaving her to stand, crying, in the middle of the park.

Her crying was the worst sound he had ever heard from her. It was worse than the screams of agony that had come from her under his Aunt Bella's psychotic torture. Now it was her heart that was in agony, and he could feel its potency. He had expected it, though. Of course her heart would be hurting. She loved him.

And he loved her. Oh, Sweet Merlin did he love her. He loved everything about her, from her bushy hair to her sarcasm to her intelligence to whatever else it was that made her who she was. He loved her, and he wanted almost nothing more than to touch her again.

But there was one thing he wanted even more than her touch, and that was her happiness. He wanted her to feel whole and warm and loved and challenged and happy and, of course, touched. And both he and all of her close friends and family he had discussed this with knew that this world, with all the magic she could no longer access and wield to her will, had no chance of making her happy. The only chance she had at happiness was for her to start over. To forget.

He raised his wand, his vision blurry with tears. He thought of school, universities, marriage and children. Of excelling and belonging. Of requited love and giving. And the touch that was a constant motif through it all. Because everything came down to touch, and Draco knew that now more than ever.

He knew that this was right.

He took one final look at the woman he loved, and whispered “Obliviate”.

 

 


End file.
